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The overriding questions of President Donald Trump’s second term are how dramatically he wants to cut government, and how far he’ll be able to go before the courts or Congress stop him.
Forty-five days into his second term, we’re starting to learn more about his plans to cut hundreds of thousands more government jobs, for instance. But Trump’s frenzied all-of-government assault on the status quo is beginning to meet some resistance.
► The Supreme Court, for instance, told the administration it would ultimately have to disburse more than $2 billion in frozen foreign aid after NGOs argued the government was not complying with a court order.
► The firing of the chair of the Merit Systems Protection Board was stopped by a court order. The board then reinstated nearly 6,000 fired probationary USDA employees. That case was brought by the Office of Special Counsel, whose firing was also initially rescinded by a court order but then allowed to proceed by an appeals court.
► In the Senate, Republicans asked Elon Musk for more input and some votes on the cuts he is driving, despite not being either elected or Senate-confirmed. He gave them his phone number to text. We’ll see if he gives them any input.
At the same time, Trump’s vision for what a drastically pared back government will look like remains unclear beyond the general goals of far fewer government workers, much less regulation, and as little nonpolitical oversight as possible.
Smaller, not necessarily smarter, appears to be the order of Musk’s orders to cut, cut, cut with his Department of Government Efficiency.
The less-than-transparent activities of DOGE have made it difficult to keep track of what exactly is going on. But it’s worth trying to assemble a view of how these actions – firing workers, freezing payments, dismissing watchdogs and offloading real estate – are adding up so far as Trump remakes government.
Plans to cut hundreds of thousands of workers
Every government agency has been ordered to prepare plans for mass layoffs at the behest of the Office of Management and Budget. The goal is for agencies to achieve “maximum elimination of functions that are not statutorily mandated.” In other words, get as small as possible without breaking the law.
Cut the IRS in half. Most Americans are preparing to file their tax returns, but the IRS is preparing a plan to cut itself in half, removing up to 45,000 workers from its 70,000-person workforce, according to reports from the Associated Press and the New York Times. IRS employees were not given the opportunity to take part in Elon Musk’s “fork in the road” deferred resignation program until after tax filing season. How many people does it take to collect taxes from 330 million Americans? One former IRS commissioner told the AP that such a drastic reduction would render the IRS “dysfunctional.”
70,000+ job cuts at VA. At the sprawling agency that cares for the nation’s aging population of more than 9 million enrolled veterans, cuts could add up to more than 70,000 jobs. VA expanded under the Biden administration after legislation was passed to expand coverage to veterans exposed to toxins and burn pits, according to CNN’s Natasha Bertrand.
VA Director Doug Collins said in a recorded video statement Wednesday the cuts were essential to improving bureaucracy and care at the sprawling department.
“The federal government does not exist to employ people,” Collins said. “It exists to serve people.”
Big civilian cuts at the Pentagon. The Defense Department, meanwhile, could trim between 5% and 8 % of its civilian workforce, tens of thousands of jobs around the country in an organization that employs nearly a million civilians. Expand these types of cuts across federal agencies.
Agencies are already in the process of firing probationary employees who have not yet been employed long enough to get federal employee protections. Some of the most-affected agencies include the Social Security Administration, which fired more than 5,000 workers and the Department of Energy, which fired at least 1,800, according to CNN’s tracker.
Trump’s plans to shrink the size of the government have been accompanied by an effort to erase independent oversight.
Trump signed an executive order seeding to assert control over independent agencies. These are entitites set up by Congress specifically to be bipartisan in nature and less vulnerable to political pressure – everything from the Securities and Exchange Commission to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
As CNN’s John Fritze wrote, “The order is part of a broader push by Trump to consolidate power over independent agencies that Congress intended to be removed from presidential control. It follows a series of controversial firings at those agencies that are being challenged in federal courts, including at the Supreme Court.
Trump’s order excluded portions of the Federal Reserve but certainly tees up the gnawing question over whether he will challenge the Fed’s immense power, granted by Congress.
Trump’s firings of watchdogs and inspectors general at multiple federal agencies raise similar concerns.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth also purged all Judge Advocate Generals in the military. CNN’s Oren Liebermann and Haley Britzky noted that in a book, Hegseth referred to JAGs as “jagoffs” standing in the way of war fighters. But Don Christensen, a retired military judge who served as the Air Force’s chief prosecutor told CNN the move was concerning.
“They serve as a conscience of the military and a moral guide as to what’s right and wrong,” and the move makes it appear the administration “want more compliant people in those positions.”
Americans don’t have a full picture of who works for DOGE, much less their salaries or conflicts of interest.
In court, Trump administration lawyers have said that Musk is not in charge of the organization and that it is government agencies headed by Senate-approved agency heads who are making personnel decisions, not DOGE. The White House has said Amy Gleason is DOGE’s acting administrator.
But in his address to Congress Tuesday night, Trump told Americans DOGE is “headed by Elon Musk.” Musk is certainly presenting as the alpha of the organization and bragging to conservative audiences about cuts, although the math frequently doesn’t add up.
The question of who is pulling the strings could become consequential in court. The Office of Personnel Management, the government’s HR department, has been taken over by a sort of shadow organization of political appointees affiliated with DOGE, according to fascinating reporting this week by CNN’s Rene Marsh. In the midst of a government-wide purge of tens of thousands of recently hired probationary workers OPM revised its guidance to government agencies to make clear the agencies, not OPM, are in charge of personnel decisions.
In terms of who is working with Musk, there have been disturbing reports about people past racist social media posts and slim resumes, but Trump on Tuesday described the DOGE team as “a group of very intelligent, mostly young people” working to terminate federal contracts.
Trump wants to close or suffocate numerous agencies.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon is now officially confirmed with a mandate from Trump to shutter the Department of Education, which Congress created to hand out federal education dollars to states. While Trump says he wants to return power over education to the states, he is also hoping to impose new anti-diversity program requirements for any school receiving federal funds.
Expect a fight in court over whether the president can simply close an agency created by Congress. It will be a multi-front battle.
USAID, which oversees foreign aid, has gotten the most attention as the administration tries to place it under the State Department, but there are other such fights breaking out across Washington.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which Congress created after the Great Recession to protect consumers with rules to guard against rapacious activity by banks, has been gutted. Enforcement of its rules appears to be paused.
Spending at the EPA could be cut by 65% as the Trump administration tries to halt and claw back funding approved by the Biden administration and Congress to fight climate change. Trump’s administration does not acknowledge the US government should be doing anything about climate change.
Trump seems to be counting on a level of disdain among Americans and voters for federal workers. But the contraction of the nation’s largest employer will have effects beyond people directly pulling a paycheck from Uncle Sam. Far more people work for the government as contractors than as direct employees.
Cuts to that spending are being conducted with little oversight, apparently by DOGE, although it has shared frequently flawed information about what cuts have been enacted. The moves have stunned the contracting world.
“What we’ve seen in the last weeks is not consistent with past government practices when it comes to paying its bills on time, and how it terminates its contracts,” said Jessica Tillipman, who is Associate Dean for Government Procurement Law Studies at George Washington University Law School. She said it’s not at all clear what the lasting implications of these cuts will be.
“What does this look like six to 12 months from now? And honestly, we don’t know,” she said.
